Hi. Looking over over the Eclipse Phase setting I noticed an alarming lack of inoffensive centrist democracies. While some experimentation with radical new forms of government is understandable in the wake of the greatest tragedy in history, it's been a decade now. Clearly it's time for someone to step in and lead the march back towards business as usual. Having said that, exactly how tough would it be to set up a representative democracy in the outer system? Specifically one coupled with a traditional market regulated by said representatives? Capitalism itself doesn't seem to be that much of a challenge. Even assuming access to basically unrestricted nanofactories and and a culture of open source and/or ubiqutuous digital piracy, some things remain scarce and thus valued. Specialist skills, hard-to-produce objects, the power and materials that go into the cornucopia machines - all of these retain their value and neither the mesh nor nanoassemblers can budge that one bit. Under the standard system practiced by the anarchist habitats, if a software designer needs some flowers arranged, he has to find a floral specialist and either hope she's in the same social network as him and feels like she owes him a favor or try to barter with her. And if she doesn't happen to need any software designed, the latter option is likely to lead to cartoonish shenanigans. Improving the barter economy by introducing a single universally desired good that can serve as a means of exchange and a store of value seems like the obvious idea. Because contrary to the apparent attitude of the autonomists, even After the Fall people apparently need each other's help and when you're trying to determine the value of a good or service, what someone else is willing to give you for it seems no worse a metric than what people think about it. Essentially the final system would end up being something between a 'transitional' and 'new' economy: everyone has access to unrestricted fabbers but instead of having a set allowance you're expected to pay for materials and energy you use as well as for any services you need other people to provide. Representative democracy likewise seems undervalued by the canon setting. While the wonders of the mesh make direct democracy possible, they don't necessarily make it desirable. The aforementioned software designer and floral specialist are unlikely to have strong opinions on how to keep the habitat's hallways clean and likely don't have the time or the inclination to do research on the subject. As such, it only makes to put a single person in charge of hallway cleanup and check in on them every couple years to see if they need to be replaced by someone else. While those with strong dislike of hierarchical systems would obviously find fault with the idea, I'd guess that many of the solar system's inhabitants have an attitude toward hierarchies that's somewhere between apathy and disinterest. So: can this be done? Is the setup workable or is there some aspect of the setting I'm missing that would keep such a habitat from being set up?